The manufacturing of absorbent articles includes the interaction of many different pieces of equipment as a web travels through the process. Each piece of equipment may transform one or more portions of the article to build the article as it travels through the manufacturing line. Often, there is a desire to make changes to the product or the manufacturing line. However, because of the complex interactions between the equipment, making a change on one piece of equipment could have multiple effects on various other parts of the line.
Large scale experiments on full production systems are costly. Using simulations of the production system to reduce the number of physically-tested options or to explore new operating regimes without taking a production system out of production has economic benefits through reduced loss of production and faster development time to market.
Individual unit operations or portions of web handling systems may be simulated using finite element modeling software such as Dassault's Simulia, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,700,364. However, current computational limitations of hardware and software do not permit integrated, full scale simulations of a diaper manufacturing process using these kinds of models directly in a practical solution time.
Computational experiments on these types of models can be done to generate response surface models, also known as surrogate models, to enable them to be used in more complex simulations. However, integrating these individual models is enabled using process system simulation tools described below.
As a result, it would be beneficial to develop a method that allows one to simulate an entire manufacturing line for a product that has one or more webs such as an absorbent article. Further, it would be beneficial to create a simulation that allows one to modify any portion of the simulation and will then optimize other portions of the simulation based on the desired fixed inputs.